Just over a year before her death, Christine Belford warned about the Matusiewicz family's potential to violently lash out, specifically mentioning the man who would later shoot her to death at the New Castle County Courthouse: estranged father-in-law Thomas Matusiewicz.
"Tom is an excellent shot. I have seen him," she wrote in an email to her attorney in November 2011.
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Those fears also apparently proved correct. According to court papers filed last month, investigators recovered what appeared to be a hit list from the vehicle Tom Matusiewicz was driving on Feb. 11, 2013.
"The first name on the list was Belford's," according to federal prosecutors, in court papers.
The other dozen or so names on the list are all blanked out in the court filing but prosecutors state in a brief that the names include "lawyers, judges and witnesses involved in David and Lenore Matustiewicz's prior kidnapping cases, as well as prior Family Court custody and termination of parental rights proceedings."
The judge who oversaw the federal kidnapping and bank fraud case against David Matusiewicz, and sentenced him to four years in prison in 2009, was Chief U.S. District Court Judge Gregory M. Sleet.
The News Journal has learned, through interviews with sources who have firsthand knowledge, that Sleet and at least one of Matusiewicz's lawyers are on the list.
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In interviews and videos posted online before her arrest, Lenore Matusiewicz maintained that her husband acted erratically and irrationally due to a brain tumor.
So wtf is the excuse for your and your spawns' behaviour then?
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The SUV was parked across King Street from the courthouse in the garage underneath the Renaissance Centre. According to the recent court filing, other items recovered in the SUV included: a computer, a photo of one of Belford's children and the note "please copy & send to Dave!
Love you all!!!! Remember shhhhhhh!!! LOL" and a black duffel bag in the hatch-back area containing a bullet proof vest, ammunition, an electric shock device, knives, plastic zip restraints and the red notebook.
Inside the notebook were handwritten notes about David's criminal kidnapping case; his Family Court case with Belford; phone numbers and addresses of people associated with Belford; real estate listing documents for Belford's home with notes indicating which rooms were occupied by the children and the "HL" list of a dozen or so names.
On the list, Belford was identified by the code "WB," which prosecutors wrote, "stood for a derogatory name that the defendants and Thomas Matusiewicz used for her."
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One of the reasons that Belford apparently feared for her life is that she felt David Matusiewicz had threatened her life previously. In the recent court filing, prosecutors include a redacted version of a letter David Matusiewicz wrote to Judge Sleet before the 2009 kidnapping sentencing.
Matusiewicz acknowledged he made a "wrong" decision in kidnapping his three children and taking them to Central America, but he also still blamed Belford.
"She was an expert at manipulating people and even had me arrested by telling the police I was having a nervous breakdown and had threatened to kill her," he wrote.
Prosecutors also include excerpts from a separate letter to Sleet, written around the same time, by Lenore Matusiewicz who maintained that Belford was a threat to the children. She described Belford as "the next Andrea Yates, Susan Smith [two women who had mental issues and killed their children]… she can snap at any time."